


Totem

by alianora



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: F/M, Stilinski Family Feels, full moon challenge, full moon challenge: wolf moon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-16
Updated: 2014-01-16
Packaged: 2018-01-08 22:20:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 884
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1138070
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alianora/pseuds/alianora
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He had been awake for most of the night - at first because he had gotten home late and was too wired to sleep, and then because his only son's choked, ragged breathing kept coming closer and closer to a scream.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Totem

Sheriff Stilinski sat in the kitchen, at a table that had been battered and beaten first by a family with a young, hyperactive, impulsive child, and then by a father and a son with no cooking skills and a lack of rules about cleaning weapons on it. In his hands, he held something small and gold, and he watched as he flipped it over and over in his fingers.

He waited.

He had been awake for most of the night - at first because he had gotten home late and was too wired to sleep, and then because his only son's choked, ragged breathing kept coming closer and closer to a scream.

It had been weeks.

Weeks of Stiles staying up later and later, playing loud music and drinking caffeine and claiming he wasn't tired. Weeks of Stiles freezing suddenly in the middle of something, and the Sheriff could almost see the panic in Stiles' eyes as he tried to figure out if he was asleep or awake. The circles under his eyes were getting deeper, and once the Sheriff had seen Stiles standing in the bathroom, pressing his face against the mirror with his hands on his temples, whispering to himself, "It's not real, it's not real, none of it is real."

If this had happened before the Sheriff had been let in on Beacon Hill's furry little problem, Stiles' ass would be in therapy before he could spit. Somewhere in the bottom of the Sheriff's junk drawer was an aged business card with tattered edges and a neatly printed name of the child psychologist who Stiles had seen a few times after his mother's death.

But now? 

He felt helpless and old and stupid.

He rubbed his forehead tiredly; the small object in his hands currently threaded over his thumb. The flash of it caught his eye, and he lowered his hand flat to the table to look at it again.

Such a small thing to hang any hopes on.

He wouldn't have even thought of it, except that he had walked into the house one night recently to see Scott and Stiles sprawled over the couch and the floor, respectively, joking about how Stiles felt like he was currently in the movie.

Stiles' voice was slow, like he was having to think each syllable before he could form it on his tongue. It was so different from his usually quick tongued, smart mouthed kid that it had made something in his chest ache.

The Sheriff had walked in, sent Scott home, and walked Stiles upstairs under the guise of changing out of his uniform. When he looked into his son's room a bare five minutes later, Stiles was already asleep - one arm flung over his eyes, and his other hand already twisting the sheet restlessly. The Sheriff had watched for a moment, unable to believe that this long, lanky almost-man was the same boy that he had tucked in so many times, checking under the bed and in the closet for Cyclops and Thanatos. 

When he had finally torn himself away from his son's bedside after smoothing up the blanket and tucking Stiles' leg back under the blanket, he had gone downstairs to see the movie was still paused on the television screen. Somehow he found himself sinking down onto the couch, still faintly warm from where Stiles had been laying. He had spent the next two hours watching the movie Inception. It wasn't really his style - too cerebral for what he preferred when he was trying to wind down - but the idea of the totem got stuck in his head.

A way to know whether you were dreaming, or if you were in the real world.

He had thought about it for several days - not the idea of finding one for Stiles, but just the _idea_ of them. The idea of having something to hold on to - like a worry stone or a touch stone. Something that meant something to you - that only you know the weight and the feel of in your hands. But it wasn't until he was sitting in his cruiser, both hands clenched hard enough on the wheel to turn his knuckles white after having yet another altercation with McCall, that he saw it.

The instant he thought it, he immediately scoffed out loud at himself. It was a ridiculous thought, and it would do nothing to help. It was just a stupid movie, after all.

But that was before.

Before the Sheriff had seen his son actually crying in his sleep, tears slipping down and one hand to his mouth like he was trying to hold back his own sobs from escaping.

That was last night.

So now, the Sheriff sat quietly at the kitchen table, waiting for his son to wake up and stumble downstairs with a fake smile plastered on and an even faker cheerful comment on his lips.

On the table in front of him was a gold ring, slightly tarnished and dull from being worn constantly for almost twenty years. On the inside was an inscription, _Forever with me,_ that was also engraved inside a ring that sat untouched and carefully put away in a jewelry box upstairs.

Underneath the table, Sheriff Stilinski curled his bare left hand into his lap. 

END 


End file.
